Glooscap Heritage Centre in tax crisis

The Glooscap Heritage Centre at the Truro Power Centre is in financial difficulty. (FRANCIS CAMPBELL / Truro Bureau)

The Glooscap Heritage Centre has again run afoul of the Canada Revenue Agency.

“We’re trying to sort things out with them,” said Lloyd Johnson, chairman of the Glooscap Heritage Society, which runs the centre. “We’re trying to line up a meeting with our lawyer in Halifax.”

Johnson, who has been involved in the heritage centre project since 1978, along with the late Millbrook chief Lawrence Paul, confirmed Thursday evening the revenue agency is trying to recoup about $240,000 from the centre in unpaid HST.

The agency has frozen the heritage society’s bank accounts. It has also threatened to confiscate the society’s assets and even Johnson’s personal assets.

The centre opened in 2006. Financial troubles started in the fall of 2012 because of concerns about the society’s involvement with the Global Learning Gifting Initiative tax shelter.

The agency alleged at the time that the society “operated for the non-charitable purpose of promoting a tax shelter arrangement and for the private benefit of the tax shelter promoter (Global)” and that “for the period from Jan. 1, 2008, to Dec. 31, 2009, the organization had received in excess of $24.8 million of cash and in-kind property.”

The society’s registered charity status was revoked at that time.

Now, Johnson, the last man standing on the board of the heritage society, said it has continued to send payments to Global Learning, including HST, but the company did not submit the HST payments to the revenue agency.

He said Global Learning is a high-profile company with plenty of legal backing while the heritage society is “defenceless.”

“It would be appreciated if we were given more time than three months to work out a long-term resolution to this issue,” Johnson said. “If the law says we owe it, then we owe it. I really hope that they don’t push too hard and force closure of the centre because I take a lot of pride in that museum. So did Chief Paul.”

Judith Kays, the Atlantic region communications manager for the Canada Revenue Agency, said she wouldn’t discuss specific cases because of confidentiality provisions but “generally speaking, the agency’s collection action is only initiated after attempts at negotiating voluntary resolution of a tax debt with the taxpayer have been unsuccessful.”

The centre is on Millbrook band land at the Truro Power Centre next to Highway 102.

“I can’t really comment on that,” Millbrook Chief Bob Gloade said of the alleged financial trouble. “It’s not the band’s business. We’re the landlord but I can’t comment on anything that’s going on internally with them.”

Gloade said the band owns the property and doesn’t charge the facility any rent. Johnson said he’s gone to both the band and the province but both are reluctant to help because of the revenue agency debacle.

And the centre’s problems may extend beyond the national tax collector.

“We received a complaint Wednesday, Aug. 13, regarding the Glooscap Heritage Centre,” said Cpl. De-Anne Sack of the Millbrook RCMP. “The RCMP are currently reviewing the information brought forward to determine if a criminal investigation is warranted.”

If one is warranted and results in charges laid, the RCMP will only then confirm the investigation, the nature of the charges laid and the identities of those involved, Sack said.

A very concerned area MLA Lenore Zann said it’s important to keep the centre going.

“Of all the community museums across the province, there is not one (other) First Nations,” Zann said. “I think it’s integral to the province’s culture and heritage to have our First Nations people represented. Tourists and schoolchildren can go and learn about the history of our own First Nations people. They have wonderful staff there who are very good interpreters.”

The centre, which sits in the shadow of a 13-metre statue of the legendary Glooscap, got an initial $1.1-million boost from the federal government when it opened in 2006. It makes money from bus tours, band bingos and other grants and donations.

“Two years ago, I got them a community museum status which means after that, they would be able to apply to get operational funding for each year of up to about at that time $22,000 and now it’s gone up to $30,000,” Zann said. “So they were actually in line to be able to get that funding this year. But then this stuff happened. Now I believe that grant is on hold.

“I can’t in good faith call the provincial department and ask them to release those funds until this is all cleared up.”

Zann said she really doesn’t want to see the centre go down.

“However, if there has been any misappropriation of funds to do with a tax scheme, then obviously Canada Revenue is going to have to do its job and people who were involved need to step away so that others can go in and run the centre to bring it back to a viable position where they are able to receive grants and operational funds from all levels of government.”

Johnson said it’s not so much that the revenue agency won’t co-operate with the society but rather that the society hasn’t approached it properly.

“It is what it is,” he said. “We haven’t asked the question properly. I got some stickhandling to do and I was never a good hockey player. I was always in the penalty box and I think I’m in it now.”